Playing Games
by Tyanilth
Summary: Snippets of Loghain and Muirnara's married life that didn't fit anywhere else.  Warnings for mature themes and a highly inventive married couple having a lot of fun. If any of the above is likely to upset you, please stop reading now. Thank you.
1. Chapter 1

_**Look, I swear my muse didn't come up with this, it's all the fault of Josie Lange and Shakespira, they're corrupting me. Honest. Really. **_

_**Anyway, this is posted here months after I originally wrote it, simply because I didn't have the nerve to publish it :). Now it's becoming the first of a set of snippets of Loghain and Muirnara's married life, mostly things that just don't fit anywhere else, and must of it M rated (what a surprise). Call it one for everyone who speculated about Muirnara and Loghain's married life, post "The Art of War". Also one for the people who always reckoned he was having far too much fun cutting her hair (and there were quite a few of you who thought that too) Nods to Shakespira's "Conspirators", Josie Lange's "Saarebas" and Lkltanon's "A Start" (now sadly gone from the Internet) Warnings for sex, BDSM, and a highly inventive married couple having a lot of fun. If any of the above is likely to upset you, please stop reading now. Thank you. :)**_

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><p><em><strong>Practical<strong>_

When Muirnara decided that a year after the Blight ended, it was indeed time to start thinking about regrowing her hair, Loghain voiced no dissent, though he had that little glint in his eyes that suggested he had all sorts of ideas running through his head. After all, as Anders pointed out, they were coming into the winter at Vigil's Keep, wearing one's hair long enough to keep the back of the neck warm was an immensely practical decision.

The trouble was that she had actually got used to keeping it cropped short. It was comfortable, Loghain had been right when he said all that time ago that most people would consider it suited her, and all the interim stages when one is growing out curly hair tend to be both less than flattering, and very hard to manage. She tried Dalish style short braids which looked terrible. Well, nobody actually told her they looked terrible, but people's expressions were just a little too guarded when they looked at her. The braid idea died an early death.

Ribbons weren't a good solution either. Headbands just looked - ridiculous. She persevered for several months to see if things improved. Since hair grows at half an inch a month at most, things certainly didn't improve fast.

And if she was being honest, there were other things she missed. She and Loghain had got used, in the months after the Archdemon fell, to turning her haircuts into a sort of game. He had discovered early how sensitive the back of her neck was, and had taken advantage of the fact. Once a month, he would trim her curls for her, then take his razor to the back of her neck. It had become a running joke between them - how slow he could do it, and how much of a frenzy the tiny, short strokes of the razor would have driven her into before he finally washed off her neck and...took advantage of the situation. And oh, did he take advantage. Frequently. Repeatedly. At length. In every sense of the word.

It wasn't that their bedroom life was lacking - not with a man like that, blessed with a pleasantly dark imagination and endless inventiveness. But she didn't trust that glint. Loghain was planning something, and when the General had a plan in his mind, Muirnara knew he rarely lost the battle. The only question was when the plan would be executed. And how badly she would lose.

The answer came late one night in the middle of another game. She might have known this one was a feint to hide a deeper plan. After all, it wasn't the first time that he had tied her down - as he had pointed out, a bedroom like the one they shared at the Vigil, with a heavy four poster bed, was just begging to be used for all sorts of inventive play. As long as the ropes were carefully tucked away in the morning so they didn't upset the servants. Muirnara suspected the servants both knew very well what went on within the keep, and weren't in the least upset anyway. There was the night she went up to their chamber to find that the belt that held certain...memories for her, and which had been delightfully employed the night before, had been carefully laid out beside her nightshift. Along with a silk scarf that had certainly not been used the night before. Loghain had just laughed, and immediately improvised a blindfold with it. After all, one could not upset the servants by ignoring their polite assistance.

So at present, Muirnara was...well, not in any position to object to anything that Loghain might have in mind, being spreadeagled on their feather bed, arms and legs firmly tied to the bedposts, silk scarf binding her eyes. She had already been driven once by his able tongue to a frenzied climax that had her shrieking into the silken darkness and grateful with what little rational thought remained to her for the thick stone walls which hopefully should prevent any well meaning Wardens coming to see if their Warden Commander had been assassinated. Though of course Loghain had barred the door. Well, she thought he had barred the door. The blindfold made it slightly difficult to check.

And now, as far as she could tell, he was seated beside her, with one hand lightly trailing up and down her body, chuckling softly as she wriggled and her back arched to push her body up towards his caressing hand. Then suddenly the hand wasn't there, and she whimpered slightly. She could hear him walking over to the washstand and the trickling sound of water being poured into a basin, then a more ominous silence, then his footsteps coming back across the room and the slight give of the mattress as his weight settled back down on the bed beside her.

When the towel was tucked under her hips, she was puzzled. When the first handful of cold, slippery, soapy foam was generously spread over her mound, she nearly screamed.

"Loghain, what are you doing?"

"Tsk tsk, my love. Do you not remember me telling you earlier in this evening that speech was not going to be permitted?"

Well, yes, he had. Screaming had apparently been allowed though. Just as well, really.

Her mouth was opened, and a damp cloth firmly inserted. Another cloth bound the makeshift gag in place. Another handful of soap was massaged over the lips of her sex and the cleft of her legs.

When the first stroke of the razor glided over the top of her mound, she whined piteously through the gag and almost came then, just from the intensity of sensation. His laugh, dark and rich and far more frequent than it used to be echoed in both ears. "I would advise you, my dearest, to exercise a little more self control than that. I have no wish whatsoever to cut your beautiful pale skin while doing this."

Oh, Andraste's flaming arse, this was so bloody unfair. Trying to hold herself still while the edge of a razor teased over mound and thighs, and slipped tantalisingly close to her clit so that that all the sensations were edged with quite delicious terror, and the whole thing happening so slowly that she could scream, were it not for the gag. A warm cloth eased away the soap and the shaved hair, and then more soap came, and the razor returned, scraping with a delicate precision on any shadow of stubble remaining. And then the last wash with cold water this time that left her shivering and aching with need, and then a soft cloth, far softer than a towel, gently dabbing dry the bare skin that felt like every breath of air was another caress.

No, that wasn't a breath of air, that was the warmth of Loghain's own breath as he closely inspected his handiwork, and that was his warm tongue grazing over the exposed, shaved skin and ohMakerthatwashisteethandIcan'tstaystillforthis...

And that was another orgasm, a climax like shooting stars out of a clear sky.

In the middle of his laughter that accompanied her gagged wails she felt him position himself at her bared opening, and then the impossible heat and hardness as he drove himself home in one long stroke that had her arching and opening to him, wetter than she had ever been, and those pounding thrusts that threatened to drive her through the mattress itself as he growled in her ear and bit at her neck. She bruised her own wrists on the ropes straining to be able to clutch at him and claw him, and do all the other things that he just wasn't allowing her to do, and his hot release very nearly finished her off completely.

When he slowly eased himself out of her and reached for that soft cloth to pat her gently dry, she didn't really need the gag to keep her quiet any longer. She probably couldn't have spoken if she had wanted to.

"Now, my dearest wife," Loghain's voice purred in her ear as he discarded the cloth and gently caressed her cheek with a finger. "I have made a couple of decisions here. You can either agree by nodding, or argue with me later and lose the argument. The end result will be no different."

She managed a tired nod.

One of his fingers trailed around her ear, tugging at her curls. "I have decided, selfishly, purely for my own reasons, that I preferred your hair cut short. I liked your bare neck to bite, I loved those little whimpers you gave when I slipped a finger over your nape, and I have found myself very much missing the games we used to play. And you have spent six months doing nothing but complain that you can't do anything with your hair and you think that it looks a complete mess. I take it you do not wish to disagree at this point?"

No, she wasn't about to disagree.

He pulled the curl that he was playing with taut, and then she suddenly felt it spring back, as the razor sliced through it. And then she wailed softly into the gag as he used it as a silky torment on the skin he had shaved earlier, trailing it like soft agony over mound and slit and all the other terribly exposed targets that the air was already teasing dreadfully.

"So then," he added as he took his hand away, "I am going to untie you, and take off the gag and the blindfold. You can then bring me the shears from the washstand, and beg me, nicely, to cut your hair for you again, and this is the course of action I would recommend. Because otherwise," and his voice was now full of dark amusement, "I intend to pin you down and cut it anyway, and while I have little doubt that you would also get a lot of fun from that game, the end result would probably be distinctly more of a mess when you looked in a mirror. Agreed?"

A whimper as he removed the gag that appeared to be an acceptance of the inevitable. The gag was removed and the ropes slipped off one by one, the blindfold went last of all. And it was quite amazing just how much begging was required (not to mention kisses, and licks, and caresses, and a prolonged speechless workout for lips and tongue around his cock) before he finally picked up those shears and patted the stool at the washstand for her to sit down on. And it is amazingly hard to sit still on a cold marble stool when your bare, shaved nether parts are in constant contact with the marble. And Loghain was chuckling through the whole thing. She would have liked to call him a bastard, but was already far too much of a sodden wreck to be able to cope with a spanking on top of everything else, delightful though that might have been under other circumstances. He knew her too well these days.

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><p>Nobody actually made any real comments about the fact that the Commander appeared to have decided to give up this idea of growing her hair. After all, as Anders pointed out, they were coming into the summer at Vigil's Keep, and short hair was so much cooler and more comfortable in the hot weather, it was a very practical decision. And one's helm fitted better that way. Short hair had always suited the Commander anyway.<p> 


	2. Chapter 2

_**This was written for Josie Lange at her request, in payment for the amazing picture she drew for me which you can see at her deviantart page (there's a link on my main page, and the picture is called I Do Not Let Go). Her request for a short piece was a sparring scene leading into Something More, and possibly with the tables being turned on Loghain in some way. All the usual warnings apply. This is set in the Hourglass universe, during the events of Awakening, and is considered to fall the morning after the first piece in the Playing Games series.**_

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><p><strong><span>Surrender<span>**

Various people noticed the Warden Commander seemed to be in a foul temper that morning.

Oh, it wasn't exactly surprising. Reports had been coming out of the Blackmarsh of more trouble there, not two months after the scouring of the place - though an eyewitness report claiming to have seen a skeletal dragon that breathed lightning instead of flame surely had to be a combination of an overactive imagination and overindulgence in the heavy barley beers that were an Amaranthine speciality. Darkspawn movements in the Wending Wood. Not to mention yet another conspiracy unmasked, perhaps one should be grateful that while the Amaranthine nobility seemed to conspire as easily as they breathed, they remained remarkably inept at it. More than enough there to fray a temper, even one as generally level as Muirnara's.

But this was unusual even for her. If a female Warden still had her courses, many would have been calculating the day of the month. She had stalked into breakfast in a bad mood and torn a strip off Anders for an innocuous comment about her hair, newly cut short again which also surprised nobody, the Warden Commander's curses about the impossibility of growing out curly hair and not looking a fool at all the interim stages had been regular grumbles for all of the six months that she had been doing so.

And then when Loghain floored her in the first five minutes of their swordplay bout in the morning sparring session, she came close to snarling at him. She had won the two bouts she had fought before that against two recruits in training, but the two recruits who had remained to watch her and Loghain took one look at her face and vanished.

"Same as last time." Loghain seemed to be ignoring her bad temper as he hauled her to her feet again. "You're locking that elbow on the strike, it slows your next stroke, and traps your shoulders. If you can't keep the elbow loose on the offhand stroke, go back to a buckler and sword and forget about this plan to return to wielding two weapons."

She frowned. "No. I have to get back to this style. You know as well as I do, Loghain, that face to face, sword and shield, I will never equal you, let alone better you."

"Not true. You've beaten me in bouts here before."

"One bout in ten. Maybe." Muirnara pulled off her helm and ran fingers through her sweat-soaked hair. "Loghain, my edge was always in speed, not strength, it always will be. There is no point in remaining in a style far more dependent on physical strength."

"It isn't all strength, and you know it."

"Even so." She reclaimed her practice dagger from the sand it had fallen in.

He studied her face. "And not all of this bad temper this morning is to do with losing a swordplay bout to me, is it?"

She gave him a deliberately blank look. "I don't know what you mean."

"No, of course you don't." His tone was sarcastic as he returned his practice sword to the rack. "But equally it's clear you don't want to talk about it. So, if you don't want to talk, and you don't want to fight, what do you want to do?"

She ignored him, staring out of the gate towards the rain-soaked woodland. He followed her gaze, and then an odd smile crossed his face. "I tell you what. Leave the paperwork for a day, and we'll go out. You say your edge on me is in speed and not strength, I say my woodcraft and stealth is as good as yours. Blunted daggers only, three hours to stalk and bring down the other. No strength, no pitched battle, just a contest at what you claim as your strongest skill."

She turned back to him and there was a hint of a smile on her face struggling to get through the sulks. "And what forfeit does the loser get?"

Her half smile was matched by his. "We'll decide that when you lose, wife."

The terms of the game, or contest, or battle, depending which way one looked at it, were agreed over morning tea in the Commander's office. Both parties would enter the wood in the hour after midday, from opposite sides, without armour of any kind. Victory would be achieved only by a bloodless capture without traps or poisons, in a manner that with a real enemy could have resulted in an undefended kill. If neither had achieved the "kill" by the fourth hour after midday, the game would be called a stalemate. Warden patrols on the road had reported nothing larger than a fox moving in those woods in a sevenday, and since at present the spawn were refusing to approach the fortress at all for reasons of their own there would never be a safer time to do something like this, but even so both carried edged weapons in back sheaths - hopefully not to be used.

And not fifteen minutes after the game had begun, Loghain was already wondering just why he had suggested this. The rain had not let up all afternoon, he was yet to see a single sign of his wife, and his shirt was soaked through. He paused and listened - no, that was wind in the branches of the coppice of beech to his right.

No, if he was honest, he knew why he had suggested it. Last night's game could have said to have backfired on him a little - although he generally took the lead in their bedroom games and Muirnara seemed more than happy that he did so, it was very rare that he pushed his luck as hard as he had last night. He had actually been surprised that she had let him get away with it, it had long ago been agreed between them that a plea for "mercy" would stop any activity in the bedchamber, and that if she was unable by the nature of the game to speak, then three sharp shakes of the head would end the game in a similar manner. She had not used either of their codes last night though. He had told her long ago that what happened in his tent was by his rules, and when the pair of them actually had a bedchamber Muirnara had told him that she did not expect the rules had changed. But a willing obedience on the part of a lover lays a heavy burden on the partner, that if nothing that one asks will ever be refused, then it becomes one's responsibility to ask nothing that the lover cannot give. It is a relationship held in a very delicate balance.

Last night he feared he had managed to get that balance wrong.

A twig cracked sharply to his right and his head shot up. So that was where she was. He studied the holly thicket in front of him. She would have realised that he might have heard the twig break as soon as she stood on it, she would be moving as fast and as silently away from it as she could. The question was east or west? He stood motionless, listening for any hint of footfalls in the dead leaves, turning his head very slightly from left to right, right to left again.

Silence.

All right, she was better at this than he gave her credit for. He silently stepped backwards, choosing grass rather than leaves to tread on by the feel of it under his feet. Most people when moving randomly to confuse a pursuer tend to turn towards their dominant hand without realising they are doing so. Muirnara was right handed, she was probably heading slightly uphill within that band of deeper cover beyond the holly thicket. That would bring her out on top of that little ridge above the stream. If he skirted round to his left and followed the bank up and just avoided the gravel bar, he should be able to come out below where she would emerge from the trees, and might be able to take her there if he just...

And then all the breath was knocked out of him as a woman's weight hit him hard between the shoulder blades as she plummeted out of the tree she had climbed. As they landed together in the wet leaves, her wooden blade was at his throat and her weight pinning his shoulders. There was the moment of instinctive tension but the smell of her skin and hair was in his nostrils and known to him, and the hissing voice in his ear was hers, though with an edge of anger in it as well as triumph.

"You're dead, Loghain."

"You win." She hadn't moved, and while with an effort he might manage to throw her off his back there was no doubt that had she indeed been an enemy, he would be dead. "How did you manage to fake the sound of the twig breaking?"

"Dug a hollow, crossed two twigs over it, suspended a heavy rock over them on a weak cord." Her voice was more normal, her breath warm against his ear. "I reckoned I had about two minutes to get away from there before the cord broke and the rock fell. It was nearer three, time to spot where you were and get up that tree. I knew you had come this way, the birds were silent in this part of the woods."

He laughed. "Excellent. So madam, do you plan to release your surrendered prisoner? Or have you other plans?"

There, he'd dangled the bait in front of her, permission to take whatever revenge she felt his actions the night before deserved. Muirnara was no fool, she would hear what he was offering. He hoped he had read her correctly.

Her chuckle suggested that he had. "Drop the dagger, slide your hands slowly forward and above your head, cross them when you get them there."

Even for her, he wasn't going to have his wrists bound in a place where a real enemy might come on them if the Maker was having a particularly humorous day, but he obeyed her command. The smell of growing leaves and rain-soaked earth filled his nose, he felt her weight on his back shift and his wet shirt being pushed up to his shoulders, the air was cold on the damp skin. Her hand ran down his back. "Now, Loghain, last night's little game put paid to six months of work on my part..."

"I beg to differ, madam. Persuading you to cut your hair again merely put an end to six months of grumbling on your part. If you weren't so stubborn you would have asked me to do it anyway, weeks ago."

"Not the point." Her fingers traced over the skin of his back and the shiver he gave had nothing to do with the cold air. "Now, what should I do to you that would be proper payment for the antics you put me through?"

"I have no idea at all, madam. But I am quite sure that your busy little mind is thinking of something."

Her fingers were loosening his belt, with a sharp tug she pulled his breeches down over his hips. "Well, since a long time ago when I cut my hair as a child, my father told me he would blister my backside with my own sword belt if I ever did it again, I think perhaps it is only fair that since you made me do it, the punishment falls to you?"

That surprised him, but he chuckled. "If that is what your honour demands, madam. I will admit the justice of the punishment. Don't expect a promise that there will never be a repeat offence though."

"Oh, I don't." He could feel her sliding his belt out of his breeches. "And if you made that promise I wouldn't believe you. In fact you could even be considered to be getting off lightly."

"Lightly?"

"Well, my father threatened to blister my backside in front of the whole Great Hall. I at least have given you privacy rather than an audience of about a hundred soldiers, Wardens and servants."

"So you do show a prisoner a little mercy?" His words ended in a gasp as the doubled over belt connected with his buttocks with a crack that echoed around the trees. She had a strong arm and it was clear that her anger with him had not been feigned. But even now as the second stroke landed he was aware that she was not putting full strength behind it - oh it hurt and it was meant to hurt, but this was not a flogging. She was scouring her anger out of herself, and he could recognise that because once, a long time ago, she had offered her body to him to do exactly the same thing to. That first night that he would never forget.

"Mercy?" The third and fourth strokes landed without warning and his groan mingled with her question. She dropped the belt beside him. "Perhaps. Now, thank me for it."

She was shedding her own breeches as she spoke and he rolled over to his back with a slight wince, the cold earth a comfort against the heat of the stripes she had left. She was kneeling beside him wearing only her own damp shirt, she had placed her sword sheath and his beside them within the reach of an arm. He could see a small smile on her face.

"Oh, I do indeed thank you, my lady." He reached out and pulled her to him and she came into his arms with a small sigh and the release of the last of the tension that had knotted her shoulder blades ever since they had got out of bed that morning. He kissed the hollow of her collar bone, ran his tongue along the scar there and heard her gasp softly. His other hand cupped her mound, caressing the bare skin that he had shaved the night before, fingers lightly exploring, she was wet and open and quivering at his touch, as aroused as he was. "But I mean to show you as well that the punishment was not entirely deserved."

"How so?"

With those words he had pulled her to her feet and spun her to face the nearest tree. His knee pushed her legs apart and he slid into her from behind with one long smooth stroke that had her groaning and pushing back against him. Oh yes, he had indeed read her right, she wanted this as much as he did, and the moment of fear that he always felt in her when he took her from behind was something he believed she wanted too, that cliff's edge that they came to again and again and her surrender to him as they balanced there. She needed these times when she was not in control, and nobody was demanding that she should be, when his will and his whims directed their actions. And yet by her nature she was a leader, and she was able to resent his control of her while being honest enough to admit she wanted it as well. He had learned to watch for those moments in her, because there was always a way out of it. Give her back her control, just for long enough to release the anger, and then accept her surrender again when the anger bled away.

His words were muffled at the back of her neck as he thrust into her hard and bit at her nape and she whined, her fingers clawing the bark of the tree. "Because, my love, you wanted it as much as I did. You missed it when I did this," and his teeth raked her bare neck as she wailed and shuddered. "You know as well as I do that you need those times when you are not the commander, and I need those times when I am not your obedient Second, and we are lucky that our needs meet so well." His arms braced either side of her and his breath came in short gasps. "You need me to impose choices on you sometimes that you would not have made otherwise, because it reassures you, that your escape from command is still there. And you know as well as I do that there is nothing I do to you that you cannot refuse. You have a way that you can let me know if I trespass too far."

"And I have never used it." Her words were breathless little cries, she was as near to another edge as he was.

"And I mean that you never shall need to." He drove himself brutally to climax with long, hard thrusts and he could feel her clamping around him as her own orgasm shook her body. His growls and her whimpers were the only sounds in the clearing and she clung to the tree for support, trembling. His arms enfolded her as they both shivered their way back to peace and they stood there for a long moment, her warm body pressed close to him. Her head drooped forward and he gently kissed the bite mark he had left at the base of her neck. She turned and laid her head on his shoulder, he stroked her hair.

"Better, love?"

She managed a tired nod. "I don't know how you know me so well."

"I love you, woman. I'd be a fool not to learn about what I love."


End file.
